New site makes fundraising easy

Need money for your medical bills, your dogs surgery, or instruments for your high school band? How about helping your neighborhood after it got slammed by superstorm Sandy?

Now there is an easy way to raise money for all those needs and more with a website called gofundme.com. Started by two friends who wanted to make the world a better place, the website walks you through a simple setup.

Brad Damphousse and Andrew Ballester created a format that welcomes everyone with an idea, an issue or a cause. You sign up, create your donation page, set your goal, get your family and friends involved and watch the donations come in.

With the exception of a 5 percent fee, all the money goes to you.

Jenny Adams watched as her New York neighborhood got hit superstorm Sandy.

“People were lining up for blankets, for food, for flashlight batteries, for water,” Adams says. “Kids were filling up buckets out of fire hydrants. I don’t know if they were drinking the water, but it was a really disturbing image to watch.”

So she created an account on the site.

“I ended up setting the limit at $10,000, with no idea that we could ever raise that much,” Adams says.

Adams says she raised even more: $10,262 in six days.

“I was completely blown away,” she says.

With the money, she helped her neighbors with blankets, batteries and generators.